It all started because I thought it would be good to get a second bed for Josie's room. Since Josie does not always live in that room, it doubles as a guest room, and our guests sometimes need more than a single bed.
I have an extra mattress, which resides in various closets, and which I have pulled out and put on the floor to add an extra spot in that room. Once, we had some friends of Darrell and Dixie's, two young married couples, and they spent four or five days camping out in that room, with one mattress and two foamies on the floor as well as the one single bed.
I measured the furniture in Josie's room, and figured out how to rearrange the furniture to make room for another bed. I figured if I was going to get another bed, I should get a trundle or bunk bed, because then there would be beds for three in that room, and there is still room for a foamie on the floor if need be.
So, first I rearranged the room one Saturday. I did it all by myself. (Just like I completely rearranged the family room furniture a few weeks before that! Go, me! I used to do that all the time as a young teenager. I would be like, oh good, Mom and Dad aren't home! I will move all the furniture in room X upstairs into room Y downstairs! Once they came home early and caught me on the stairs with a dresser and Dad was like AAAAGGGGHH! So many things could have gone wrong. Or--the time I switched couches in the Orem house and got one completely caught in a doorway, and my sons had to figure that out!) Well, it all went smoothly, furniture all moved, floor and floorboards all vacuumed.
Then Bruce and I went bed shopping, and we just found nothing that we liked. I thought that I wanted a trundle bed like Bruce's mom used to have in the bedrooms in her older house. But we did not find anything like them, or if we did, they were too pricey or too ugly or too ornate. So I looked online, and found what I thought would be a good daybed and trundle, but they were at Walmart.com. I hate Walmart. I have never used Walmart.com and had not ever planned to. But...it was the best thing, the closest to what I thought I wanted.
But before biting the Walmart bullet, I decided to look on ksl.com. I found some decent things, but the down side was transportation. I don't have a truck, so how would I realistically pick these things up? There was one trundle bed advertised, though, that seemed to be at a store. So on Saturday July 5, while Bruce and David were having Saturday afternoon naps, I slipped out and went to that store. The trundle bed was white and had three drawers under the trundle part as well, so that guests could have some drawers to use in that room. It was pretty and a good price, but was not the idea that I had in mind, and I worried that the trundle would be too heavy to pull out, especially with the floor being carpeted. So I decided against it, and went home and ordered the daybed and trundle that I had been looking at on the Walmart.com website. I didn't even tell Bruce about the bed I had looked at.
The boxes from Walmart came on July 7, which was super fast. Bruce wanted to be helpful and surprise me by putting them together. So he began. He called me later and this conversation happened:
Bruce: I put the daybed together, and then I opened the trundle, and they don't match.
Me: What do you mean they don't match?
Bruce: Well, the trundle is white.
Me: It is supposed to be white. Both pieces are supposed to be white.
Bruce: The bed is black.
Me: What!? Seriously? They are supposed to be white!
Bruce: I thought you said like my mom's bed, and hers was black.
Me: I remember hers being white!
(Someone else will have to weigh in on that--what color were the two daybeds with trundles she had? I still think they were white!)
So we decided that he would do nothing further and when I came home from work I would look at them and decide whether to keep them or find out about returning or exchanging them. Which, since I bought them online and they are BEDS, was looking like it would not exactly be fun. Can't exactly put them into a shopping bag and walk up to Walmart Customer Service!
Well, the bed just looked all wrong for the room. But I really wanted to get the beds DONE because N, A and D's high school friend and former piano teacher of P and J is coming to stay with her husband and kids, so I thought I should try to have real beds in time for that event. They were not the reason for the purchase, but I figured that if I was going to do it, they might as well enjoy the fruits of it.
So the first thing I did was email the Walmart.com help people. Because, though this seems foolish reasoning in hindsight, I just didn't want to have to hassle with taking the bed apart, and digging all the packing materials out of the garbage, because Bruce had also cleaned up after himself. And I thought that if they realized that my order said white, the packing slip said white, but the bed was actually black, they might offer me a big enough rebate for the trouble of their mistake, that I would decide to just live with the wrong color of bed. With its non-matching trundle. So I asked them about it. And they said that they could offer me a 15% rebate to keep the ugly bed, or I could return it, or I could return it and order a replacement. So I said that I needed to think about it.
So I thought about it and talked to Bruce about it, and he was really not impressed with the quality of the bed. He said that metal pieces would bend in his hands while he was putting them together, and the bottom of the frame was held together with these hard pieces of plastic. And it was ugly and not what I had ordered! But I thought...if it is such shoddy quality...which should not have been a surprise because...Walmart!...then I don't want to keep it AND I certainly don't want to replace it. At that moment, I thought that I would keep the trundle and try to find another bed that would go over it, or keep the trundle to put under the bed in Rosie's room, because it is a daybed. (Black and much nicer than the awful Walmart one.)
In my mind, there was a Walmart person "assigned" to my case. The person had answered my letter and signed her first name, and said, "If you have any more questions just reply to this e-mail." But actually...every time I wrote I would get a different person! But at this point in time, I am still in my imagined Walmart fantasyland, so I replied to the previous e-mail and said that I had decided to return the bed but I did NOT want to replace it but that I would be keeping the trundle. So helpful person wrote back--but it was a different helpful person, which surprised me, because where was the person "assigned" to my case? (Answer: there was none.) The person said that s/he (can't remember who at this point--although I do still have all the emails! and will have until the end is in sight) would generate the return for me, and s/he gave instructions how to go online and print the requisite packing slip.
And so I did. But before I clicked on accepting it, I noticed that the return slip was for the trundle bed, not the daybed. Gaah!!! So I wrote in reply again to explain the mix-up. This helpful (not) person said that I should just go ahead with it because...whatever. So I wrote in reply again to say, no, firstly, there was about a $30 difference in price, and secondly, the people who receive returned items would be looking for a trundle and they would get a daybed and think, "This is not what was supposed to be returned." So I insisted that of course I was not going to click the accept button until that was fixed. I went through a few people about this, until finally this guy named Byron, who must be manager because I have had a few more rational e-mails from him through this debacle, said that it was fixed.
So I went back online and it looked fixed. So I went through and accepted the terms, but just before I got to the end of clicking here and clicking there like websites seem to enjoy having you do, it told me that if I clicked this last time, THE REPLACEMENT WOULD THEN BE SHIPPED. Replacement? Excuse me? I did not WANT a replacement. Did I not make that clear in the gazillion earlier e-mails? But there was no way out of the system, no way to go back and undo my earlier clicks, and I was just stuck, so I had to click on accept to get out of there. At least I was able to print the packing slip.
Then I immediately went back to Byron's e-mail and replied "I DID NOT WANT A REPLACEMENT! STOP IT FROM COMING!"
But someone wrote back and said, "It's too late. There is no way to stop it."
Seriously? This is just minutes if not seconds later!! So I wrote back. Again. And said, "Oh come on. This happened SECONDS AGO. You should be able to fix it. You are the customer service people. Fixing things is what you are supposed to do. I TOLD you people that I did not WANT a replacement! How did you not understand that?" The reply I got was that they would put a note on the file to try to stop it, and I would know within 48 hours if it had worked or not. And if the shipment came, then I could just return it. (Because....THIS return is going SO WELL that OF COURSE I want to do another one!)
In the meantime, I am getting so irritated by the whole thing that I no longer want the trundle. I just want NOTHING to do with Walmart. Ever again. I just have to figure out how to get rid of these two pieces of furniture and get my money back, and I will never darken the door of Lord Wal-de-mart's lair ever again.
On Wednesday night (July 9) I took Bruce and showed him the trundle bed at the weird little furniture store. It is NICE. Bruce says we should get it because we will be much happier with it. NO LIE. The Walmart bed has been the opposite of happy-making! The new bed will be delivered on Thursday. I can't help but think...if only I had brought Bruce to see the bed on Saturday and NEVER bought that Walmart bed! I would already have the new bed in place and I would not be in Walmart purgatory.
We go back home and get the two beds packed--take the black one apart and put in the box and tape it up with the packing slip inside, tape up the opened trundle bed box. I email my friends at Walmart to say that I no longer want the trundle bed, so what should I do about that? I am told to just box it up and write the order number on it and just return it with the daybed when the courier comes to get it. I argue with them that this makes no sense. If one of them requires a packing slip, obviously the other one would, too. One helpful writer even told me, "It doesn't matter what box you return it in. Any box will do." And...we were ever talking about boxes?
As I am conversing with them back and forth about the trundle bed, which they are NOT turning into a return and/or replacement--at least there is that--but also not giving me any good ideas about how to get it out of my house and get my money back, the 48 hours goes by. The 48 hours during which I have been waiting to find out if the notice to cancel the shipment of the bed that I never ordered or wanted worked. We are at...what Thursday now? And I get an email notice, all happy and cheerful from Walmart telling me "Hurray! Your order has shipped!"
So I write to them, and I say, "Okay. You shipped me a daybed that was the wrong color. You messed up the return so it was for the wrong item. When you corrected the item, you turned it from a return to a replacement. You shipped me another bed that I don't want when I am still sitting here four days after I have printed the packing slip to return the first one, and the courier who is supposed to pick up the package hasn't come, and I already have a houseful of furniture I don't want sitting around in boxes. Is there not SOMETHING we can do about this? Can't we stop the shipment somehow?" I keep having to explain and explain and explain.
Finally one bright light in the Walmart online customer service department tells me that I can call the courier, FedEx and refuse shipment of the second bed. If I do that, it will be returned to them. Still irks me that I have to do this calling when I NEVER WANTED OR ORDERED the bed! But, I also did NOT want to have this bed come to me and then I would have to try to return it! That would be worse.
So I look up FedEx, I call them and say that a bed is being shipped to me from Walmart and I do not want it. After not too big a hassle on the phone, the operator tells me that although it has already shipped and is enroute, they will put a note on it that it has been refused and not to deliver it to the customer, but to return to sender. In the meantime, I am waiting for that call from the courier to pick up the first daybed and hopefully, if the customer service people are right, both pieces of my original order. I have my nagging doubts that the plan is going to work--no packing slip in box number two after all--but my hope is seeing me through the weekend.
So, while the greenery looks great, there is not much fruit! My attempt at gardening is pretty well fruitless. We have had three tomatoes, and it looks like a few cucumbers are trying to grow, very slowly.